Bill Heard Enterprises – the world’s top-selling Chevrolet dealership group – announced on Wednesday that it will be closing the doors of 13 of its franchises. Bill Heard faced an economic perfect storm with a slumping economy, high gas prices, cancelled floorplanning from GMAC and a heavy reliance on trucks and SUVs, all of which proved ultimately to be too much to overcome.
Bill Heard will close stores in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Tennessee and Texas, leaving about 2,700 workers jobless. Bill Heard closed the doors to its store in Arizona earlier this month, according to Automotive News.
“The company had worked to develop and implement a strategy and a course of action that would enable it to operate successfully,” the company statement said. “However, the conditions necessary to sustain the business through the current challenges were not present.”
The closings came as quite a surprise, with store managers only learning of the closures at about 2 pm on Wednesday. Even customers were caught off-guard by the closures. “People are being called from the service (departments) and told to pick up their cars. … I have heard that people have gone to the dealership to pick up their new cars and have been given the keys to their trade-ins,” Bill Cloud, a spokesman from the Georgia Governor’s Office of Consumer Affairs, told Automotive News.
The news of the closures definitely doesn’t bode well for General Motors. Not only has GM lost one of its biggest dealers, but it is also a reflection of how bad the U.S. car market really is.
